dreams 101
by Sally Mn
Summary: Even heroes have their nightmares...
1. Chapter 1

**dreams 101**

**AVON**

In Avon's dreams, they were alive again but they - and he - knew they would die.

They were on the Liberator again, a smaller, shabbier, dirtier Liberator, deserted and decaying like the Hommik villages near Xenon base, with the flight deck couches oddly shaped, blood-red and stained, the work stations too-small or too-large, and a dark, colourless space where the fascia ought to be. Gan, Cally, Blake... and him.

Gan, his face battered and his small eyes as dark and empty as the caves below the Xenon base, but still smiling, still reasonable, still insisting that he would follow. It felt vaguely unfair to be so irritated by someone who had - who would - die - somewhere, he didn't know where - somewhere underground. It felt vaguely terrifying to be talking to Gan about it.

But only vaguely.

Cally, walking in a strange, twisted way as if broken inside, her mouth set rigid and the thoughts she sent at him as harsh and cutting as the bleak Xenon winds. He couldn't recall how she would die, though he knew it would happen, and all too soon. In his dreams, she didn't seem to care, but then in his dreams, she wasn't dead.

Yet.

Blake... it hurt, when Blake said he would die on Jevron, alone. As pale and drawn and hollow-eyed as he had been that last day, a tattered, dirty bandage still wrapped round his shoulder, Blake talked softly, his voice thin and whispering, like the strange, choking cry of the alien birds they killed each autumn. Talked of broken thoughts and memories, of people he didn't recall and Avon didn't know, of nightmares dreamed within the nightmare lived on Jevron, after they had lost him. Blake wouldn't tell him _how_ he had died - would die. Maybe Blake didn't know. It hurt, because Avon needed to know. It hurt, as nothing else ever did and ever would.

If they'd tell him, he thought in the dreams, he could stop it happening. If he didn't wake, they might tell him how.

**~oOo~**


	2. Chapter 2

**VILA**

Being President of the Galaxy is really not that bad, y'know.

Even if its only in a dream. Your dreams are good.

Here you are, sprawled on a throne which is made of solid - but oddly soft and squashy - gold, and covered with silver and red furs and velvet the colour of rainbows. Dressed in what looks like snakeskin, only softer than silk. In a room walled with amethysts and sapphires and blue diamonds, letting the sunlight through.

Your handpicked virgin attendants (three hundred this time, absolute beauties every one of them ) all dressed in the same soft, bright snakeskin uniforms, are feeding you Cyclops eyes in cream and wine sauce, sugar flowerflies, grapes and bleekberries and seven different wines. And another three hundred are bringing in the latest lot of gifts from your grateful, humble, loyal, rich galaxy... jewel-encrusted keypads, painted giant Jabberwocks that sing like sixteen Soolins in the shower, silver groundfliers with red velvet seating for twelve (you can take the best eleven virgins, you think), statues of every naked goddess in the twelve sectors (and that makes for a lot of goddesses), a mountain of kairopan and a lake of feldon crystals, plus priceless fruits like goldsimmon and silvaberries, and real coffee, and seventy-seven _more_ different wines.

"And that is the last," the last virgin says (hey, she looks like Servalan - a soft, sweet seventeen-year-old Servalan. Damn, your dreams are good) as they put the last statue in front of you. It's a pink and gilded naked - flesh-eating lily. With diamond teeth. Personally, you prefer goddesses. "You now own everything in the galaxy, your Supremeness."

"Great, wonderful," you say dreamily. "Not bad for a Delta thief, eh?"

She smiles, still sweetly but there's something a little too - sharp - about her perfect teeth. You don't like that, it's something a little imperfect in your dreamworld. You shift on the not-quite-so-soft gold chair.

"But you're not a thief anymore, are you?" She says, and her voice sounds like an echo off the darkening sapphire walls. "You're the President."

"Once a thief always a thief," you say, wishing the painted Jabberwocks (which now sounds like _sixty_ Soolins in the shower) would shut up for a while. "It's what I am - _who_ I am."

"Who you are?" Several of the virgins - and hey, they all look like Servalan, not as soft, less sweet - are speaking now. Speaking all together, all echoing, and it's giving you a headache. (Why is it your good dreams won't _stay_ good?) "But who _are_ you?"

"I'm the President," you try for a little dignity, though it's something you're not good at, you've never needed it before. "And I'm a thief. I stole the Presidency, didn't I?"

And you remember (why the hell couldn't you remember before?) that you didn't steal it. You were given it. Like you've been given all this. Everything you ever wanted. Everything in the galaxy...

"How can you be a thief, when there's nothing to thieve?" A sour, spiny Servalan says, and you start to sweat. "If you own everything, you cannot steal from anyone. You can't _be_ a thief anymore." And the thought makes you sick. Nothing to steal..?

_You can't be a thief anymore._

Nothing, nowhere, never again?

_You can't be a thief anymore._

But it's all you know how to... "So what are you," and the Servalans sound like a flock of Jabberwocks screeching at you, "who are you now?"

**~oOo~**

And you wake, shaking and breathless and about to scream.

Damn, your dreams are bad.


	3. Chapter 3

**CALLY**

The Liberator is quiet. Very quiet.

Too quiet.

The silence inside my mind hurts. I head for the flight deck, where there will be light and people and noise: Avon and Tarrant arguing, Vila telling bad jokes, Orac buzzing and lecturing, Dayna singing badly and playing her lute even worse, Zen humming and clinking and all of it loud and brash and my shield against the silence.

They are there. Avon has his back to Tarrant, whose mouth is moving, whose teeth and flashing in that sweetly smug laugh of his. Vila is sprawled on the couch, talking slowly and lazily to - I think - Orac. Or maybe Zen. Certainly not to Dayna, who is tuning that awful lute thing of hers, perhaps. I can see her fingers, snapping at the strings. I can see it.

I cannot hear it. I cannot hear anything. I know I am crying, but I cannot hear my own sobs, my own cries, my own voice.

The silence is everywhere. Oh god, it hurts.


	4. Chapter 4

**TARRANT**

Cally's calling for help.

The others down there - all of them. My crew need teleport, I need to order Orac to work the teleport. I have to, I just have to open my mouth and give the order, just open...

I can't. I _can't_. If I do, they'll fall out.

I can feel them, loose, looser, loosening, bumping together in my mouth and rubbing onto my tongue. They taste of powdered chalk, rough and - cold. They shouldn't be cold, should they? But they are against my tongue.

Zen is asking for instructions, Orac's buzzing and blinking and won't do a damned thing unless I open my mouth and give the order.

Cally's gone. Avon is yelling at me over the intercom, and I'm standing here, useless - _useless_ - with my hand over my mouth, holding it shut, and staring at the three of them, broken and crumbling on the console. Crumbling into white, chalky dust. And I don't know why, I don't know why, but I know I can't - I don't dare - let any more fall out.

From somewhere, I can hear shooting, I can hear Vila screaming and Dayna - oh god, Dayna I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm... I need to help you I need to just give the order to Orac. I just need to speak.

But I can't open my mouth. I can't. I _can't_.

My mouth is full, I can feel them breaking and the brittle fragments against the sides of my mouth. They hurt - sharp, dry, icy cold - and I can taste now blood. I can't swallow, and I can't breathe, and I can't open my mouth, and my crew are dying.

The sound is breaking up - the shots are louder, echoing from the intercom and around the flightdeck and mixed with Dayna's high-pitched frantic cries, like the scream of a dying... morning alarm.

Morning alarm?

Dream. Damn it - _that_ dream. That all-too-familiar dream. I sit up, finally yelling at Orac, who isn't even there. And find I've fallen out of bed, on my face by the feel of it.

I drag myself up and stumble to the washbasin, my mouth still open and working uselessly. I turn the vapour tap on full, and aim it straight at my face. Just a dream, just _that_ dream, doesn't mean anything. I don't know why it scares me, I never _ever_ know why them falling out scares me so much...

I lean over the washbasin, letting the hot sweet mist soothe me.

I feel something odd, wriggling loosely, moving in my mouth against my tongue. It hurts...

And a single, bright white tooth drops and clatters against the washbasin.


	5. Chapter 5

**GAN**

"I dreamed about the beaches on Lindor last night," Gan says.

"Oh? Nice."

The big man sprawls back, comfortable and placid and solid, and gazes into his coffee mug. "Yes, they were beautiful. All silver sand and palm trees, and clear blue water like in an Alpha-class swimpool. Just like the holovids we saw."

"You're lucky, y'know."

Gan looks up.

"You have good dreams. Lindor beaches, and Presidential palaces, and those Harvest-festival-theme-parks on Destiny, and the crystal domes of Teal and Vandor. And even the lakes of Gardenos and the Alpha resorts of Palmero... all the places we've only see on viscasts, but you get to go there in your dreams. Yeah, you're lucky."

"Am I?" Gan shrugs. "Maybe I am. But after all, wherever I am, I'm always on my own."

"Well, if you find yourself in a Rest Centre one night, do me a favour, will you?" Vila gets up and heads for the door. "Dream me in there too."

Gan watches him leave. "I wish I could," he mutters. "You've got no idea how I wish I could."

_But I'm always - always - on my own,_ he thinks, _except for the people I've killed._


	6. Chapter 6

**DAYNA**

Dayna hadn't imagined it. There was something peeking out at her from Avon's wrist: a small, dark murky something with a flash of white face, scuttling on too many legs back under his cuff.

She jumped back, feeling stupid when he raised an eyebrow at her.

"There's something inside -" She stopped, and gestured vaguely, hating the helpless feeling, but she _hated_ them so much; she didn't want to get closer

Avon's other eyebrow also went up.

"Can't you feel it?"

"Feel..." She also hated Avon's humouring-the-idiot tone that he usually kept for Vila. "Feel what?"

"There was something there!"

He looked down at his sleeve, then up at her again. "Perhaps you need more rest, Dayna."

"There!" It darted out again, scurried across his palm and dropped down onto the console. "That - that -"

"Arachnoid?" He shrugged. "Yes, we seem to have picked them up on Sarran."

"We've never been back to -"

She suddenly remembered - couldn't think how she'd forgotten - they had been back. Not that she could recall why, or how, or what had happened. Not that she cared.

"Just kill it, Avon!"

"Kill -?" He looked down, but it had made it to the floor and under his seat. It peered out at her from under his seat - in the shadows, it looked bigger. No, it _was_ bigger, the size of a gameball balanced on those thin, ever-shifting, filthy legs... She shuddered and backed away. Hating herself for being scared, hating the others for not doing something, hating it most of all...

It.

It... _Them_.

There were two of them, their round white faces fixed and staring.

They looked like - like someone she - she knew.

Two frozen Servalan faces with black, ragged holes for eyes and lifeless scarlet rictus grins stared back at her.

And there was another - _another_ - the size of a ten-credit coin, perched on the couch, jumping straight at Avon. Before she could scream, it landed - clumsily, scrambling for balance, its tiny claws digging in and leaving dirty, bloody trails in his neck - and scrambled inside his collar.

"AVON!"

"What?"

She stumbled back, horrified by the coldly placid expression on his face as he dabbed at the blood with his fingers.

"Not much we can do, is there?" He went on, his voice oddly muffled. The little arachnoid poked its head up from his collar, and waved two hairy legs in a vague, obscene greeting. The two under the chair shuffled and pushed a third one out of the way. A _bigger_ third one.

"Can't take them back," Cally said from behind her. "Can't kill them all. Might as well learn to live with them."

And Vila. "They're hairy and alien but at least they're small... well, sort of."

She whirled around, furious - and staggered back. There were six or seven - all sizes, from coin to nearly as big as Orac - on the couch, pushing for places, leaving smears and trails of filth and dark blood. All staring at her with frozen Servalan faces, and frozen, empty, grinning Servalan mouths smeared with blood.

Vila had scratches, deep, ragged ones, on his face and arms. There were the marks of jagged little teeth on Cally's neck., and four - no five - of the things in her hair.

She backed into something and fell, awkwardly, terrified. The arachnoid the size of a dog staggered on its spindle legs, flashed that horrible fixed grin at her, and jumped away, running clumsily for the corridor. It jumped over Tarrant, who was sitting in the doorway half-covered in clambering, fighting little arachnoids that fought and bit each other and him.

Avon shrugged and went back to work, absently swiping at the ball-sized ones that were dragging themselves up his legs. One caught its claws and teeth into his hand and was carried up towards his face. Dayna wanted to yell ay him, but the sight of an arachnoid crawling out of his mouth closed her throat and choked her into silence.

Then they stopped. They turned their ghastly white faces and stared at her, all those hated, white faces with black empty holes for eyes. The largest of them all stepped delicately over Tarrant's legs, and crept towards her. The others just watched, twitching and swaying on those thin legs.

It came closer, and the lipless mouth opened, all teeth and smears of blood-red scarlet. And it squealed in a high, trilling noise that sounded like screaming, sounded like agony, sounded like...

Her alarm.

Ringing by her bed.

Dayna started, and sighed, and reached for it. As she clicked it off, she almost thought something warm and hairy brushed against her hand...


	7. Chapter 7

**SOOLIN**

She sits on the twisted stairwell and listens.

Down there, where the thing in Dorian's cellar is slowly... slowly... so slowly digging itself out. One rock at a time, one rock every night.

She sits there in the dark and the silence until she hears the muffled, heavy thud of that one rock, small, large, even boulder-size, falling away. Only then can she wake up, and begin her day, and leave the darkness for a while.

One night the last rock will fall.


	8. Chapter 8

**JENNA**

I wake up slowly. After all, there's not very much to wake up for, these days.

I'm lying - well, sprawling - on the flight deck couch in what was once a rather nice blue gown (it's worn and faded now) and bare feet. The couch itself - hell, the flight deck - is still as much as it was when we first set foot on the ship (though sometimes I'd swear the walls shake when one of us totters into them), though it's fading, dirtier and more untidy since we both stopped caring. The computer facade still glows brown and gold.

You look old; I hadn't realised how old. I must look old, too.

"I had that dream again," I'm not sure why I bother talking to you, or why you listen anymore.

"Really."

"Yes, the one where we didn't leave him there."

"Him?" You're being deliberately obtuse, aren't you?

"You know who I mean -" at least, I hope you do, "- the rebel. The one we left on the prison planet. What was his name again?"

You frown at me, whether in annoyance or because you really can't recall, I don't know or care. "Don't you remember?"

"Hey, it was decades ago - if we're counting."

"Which you aren't, of course." Your voice has a shadow of the old vitriol, but is mostly tired. And bored. But not as bored as I am.

Yes, _that_ dream. Where I made you bring him and the others back, and he took back the ship, and took us to hell and back for his ideals. Hey, but hell would be rather nice now... or different, which is the same thing.

"So where are we going?" I wonder about heading for my cabin, having a shower, changing into another old, out-of-fashion outfit from the Wardrobe Room... but who's going to see it? Only you.

"Del..." You stop to squint at the console display - your eyesight's not what it was, is it? The medical unit may still be more advanced than anything the Federation has, but with just the two of us - and neither willing to trust the other to do the surgical work - there isn't much it can do to stop the decay.

Your mind's fraying too. Faster than mine, but not fast enough.

You look old, hundreds of years old. So do I. So does this ship.

"Del 10. They say it's quite pretty."

"From the surface." Yes, I remember, fantastic mountain scenery, low gravity, beta particles... a visitor's haven. "But what good is that to us?"

"You can go down," and you look up, eyes black and cold in your craggy face, and smile a ghastly, cadaverous smile. "We both know the teleport works."

"We've known that for fifty years, and no, I'm still not setting foot off the ship, Avon." I smile back at him, knowing my face is just as wrinkled, my smile just as wasted. "But if you want to go down..."

"No."

Stalemate. Like it's been for fifty years. Like it's been since we left the rebel - what _was_ his name? - and set off together. I don't trust you to bring me back if I leave the ship. You don't trust me to bring you back. We don't trust anyone else in the galaxy enough to contact them for help.

Every night before I go to bed, I order the computer not to let you kill me, and I know you do the same when I'm not there.

There's scraps of dried skysquid concentrate on the table in front of me. There's enough food concentrate for the two of us for another 450 years, it seems: all of it either artificial-eggplant-flavoured tofu or skysquid. And the soma and adrenalin ran out years ago, so there's water to drink.

"No?" The quaver in your voice might have once been mockery - now it's almost a death rattle. "Then I imagine - we'll look at the stars over Del 10. We've only seen them..."

"Fifty, sixty times, yes I know." There's been a lot of time to fill. "And hundreds of others like them."

You raise a shaggy grey eyebrow. "If you have any better ideas on how to spend our time..."

You know I haven't. You know I ran out of ideas - ideas that didn't involve you entrusting the ship to me, or me to you - years ago. You say nothing, and I have nothing to say.

We should have brought him back. Whatever his name was. That rebel who died decades ago.

I may as well go back to sleep, and dream of when we brought him back, and we went to hell and back for him, and this - life - with you is the one remembered as a dream.


	9. Chapter 9

**BLAKE**

The wire went through his hand. When it was pulled from - somewhere above - the hand raised, slowly.

It didn't hurt. At least, if there was pain, he didn't recognise it. He stared down at the wire, and the small blob of bright red paint where it entered his cracked and peeling skin.

There was another, he knew, that went through his mouth and down into his jaw, which also moved when pulled. He vaguely thought he heard himself speak, in an odd, garbled tongue, words recorded on the damaged clockwork in his hollow head, imprinted on the cheap toy pump that was his heart. Even his eyelids were wired, to open when told... and more often, to shut.

He could see himself in the shabby plasteel wall that served as a dim, distorted mirror. See the broken, flaking lips that gave him a permanent empty smile, the splintered flexiglass eyes that showed nothing but shadows, the splintered and crumbling, badly painted wood of his face and throat. The fraying costume that hid a battered and broken, but still workable, frame.

The wires pulled him forward, onto a threadbare white stage; his feet, just like his hands, moved obediently where the wires took him, among other puppets both old and new, and the shabby, black-painted tin monkeys with lipless metal mouths over shiny, hungry metal grins, and soulless black eyes.

And above them all, coldly beautiful dolls with the faces of Alphas twitched the wires and watched in silence.

But it didn't hurt. Or if it did, the clockwork in his mind didn't know it.

**~oOo~**

Every night, he woke in darkness, and just for a moment he still felt the wires.

**-****the end-**


End file.
